Alumnus Lawson Featured in Forbes

Cree Lawson, 1995 Belmont alumnus, was recently featured on Forbes for his success in providing ROI to destination marketing organizations. Lawson is the CEO and founder of Arrivalist, an organization which seeks to measure the way media moves consumers from one destination to the next.

Lawson explained to Forbes that his company wants to “make it easier for marketers to connect people with places and to make marketing more of an invitation and less like an ad.” He continued with, “We feel we can build insights and predictive analytics on the way people travel and the impact that has on local economies.”

Lawson started Arrivalist in 2010, and after designing and patent pending the technology, the company is now fully launched and serving destination markets. The company’s first launch partner was the Atlantic City Conventions and Visitors Authority after hurricane Sandy, which dropped tourism counts in Atlantic City to historic lows. Arrivalist helped measure the impact of digital advertising with the data to prove the value of its investments.

At Belmont, Lawson was an English major and editor of the Belmont Vision, helping make it one of the first five college papers to be published online. Lawson saw great success after graduating: starting Travel Ad Network and turning it into the largest travel information audience in the world, serving in marketing roles for companies such as the Associated Press, Gannett and Time Warner Trade Publisher, as well as being a nationally-recognized investigative reporter.

“Tourism and destination marketers are my heroes. It’s the toughest marketing challenge there is to convince someone to go from one location to another. We have an opportunity to help tourism take its rightful place at the center of economic development and provide tourism marketers with a clear measurement of their digital advertising investments,” Lawson told Forbes.